Brannigan

DOTA 2

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The more you play (well) the better people you get matched in with, and the less that sort of stuff should happen. Though I'm not really one to talk, I've only got 20 games under my belt.

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How active is the Idle Thumbs Dota community? I've just started really getting into Dota 2 and am playing limited draft. I'm okay, but not great - would like to start playing with a regular group as I try to get more familiar with the game.

 

I've been in the Idle Thumbs chat room a few times, but never saw much going on there. Are there specific days/times people get on to play? Is there an Idle Thumbs guild where ya'll queue up games against each other?

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There's an Idle Thumbs guild you have to get into to see most of the chat. I've been on at bad times and I haven't gotten in myself.

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There's an Idle Thumbs guild you have to get into to see most of the chat. I've been on at bad times and I haven't gotten in myself.

 

Cool - do we know who the guild managers are? That way I can look for them in the chat room and ask for an invite. Or are they really selective with who gets invited? Should I post pics of my kickstarter t-shirts to show off my Thumbs loyalty? :)

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I can add people to the guild. I haven't been on much recently because I was traveling the past couple weeks and school just started for me. Feel free to add me and I'll try and add you ASAP, but unless they've changed it I can't add someone who isn't currently playing Dota 2, meaning we would both have to be on at the same time.

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I can add people to the guild. I haven't been on much recently because I was traveling the past couple weeks and school just started for me. Feel free to add me and I'll try and add you ASAP, but unless they've changed it I can't add someone who isn't currently playing Dota 2, meaning we would both have to be on at the same time.

 

Cool. I'll try to get on tonight, but if I can't, won't be able to until Friday. I'll keep an eye out for you in the chat room. I'll need to find other newish/patient players to play with - hopefully there are a few of those in the group.

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I think I have 9. More loses - maybe 11 or 12. But I've done a bunch of bot matches trying out different heros and steadily increasing the difficulty. I can usually do okay on hard now, depending on the hero. And I've watched a lot of matches between Daily Dota, TI3, and Purge's YouTube channel. It's gotten to the point where I'm seeing dota in my dreams. I think that means I should take a break, which will be easy since the next few days will be hectic and tough to find time.

 

Tried asking for a guild invite last night in the chat, but didn't see a response, so I'll just try again later. My steam ID is the same as my username here, dekjo. But I'm not in that big of a hurry; I need to get a new mic/headset setup before I start playing with non-pubs as my current ones are broken. And trying to play without good communication seems ineffective.

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Wow, I was playing late last night, and I started getting in some foreign language games. I can only guess it that it was from somewhere in Asia, because man they played super conservative.

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IDK if i posted in here earlier but I'm usually good for 1-2 games on a standard week night. I would LOVE to be a part of the guild. I'm spoiled rotten and generally won't play without a 5 stack. The idlethumbs chat is often kind of dead so tend to only play with dudes from the GiantBomb guild and channel. While that is awesome I need to get some DoTA in with some thumbs!

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How good is the matchmaking in Dota 2? We were doing pretty good against Easy bots so decided to try a human match thinking they'd be at our skill level (lvl 1.5). NOPE. They utterly crushed us even going so far as to camp our spawn with Sniper. It was terrible. Is this a common thing? How wildly does human player ability skew at a given level? I was wondering if people had 'prestiged' and were skilled players who were starting new Dota lvl stats? If that's even a thing?

 

oh and I tend to play every weeknight 10-12pm EST if anyone wants to hang. same nic on steam.

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It depends on your group size and the time of day. I generally get matches at around my level when queing solo, but when you have 5 man groups it tries to match you with other 5 mans, which are generally going to be higher skill level than that.

 

I had a similar situation with some Giantbomb guys last night, we were advertised low level matchmaking, but ended up with pretty high level opponents. Of course, that could also be because at least one of the folks in the group was much more experienced than the rest of us.

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Huh, that'd do it I suppose. We were a five man group but all new players to the game. (Me and a bunch of my coworkers). I guess we should keep playing bot matches for now. Kind of frustrating!

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I know it sucks but you do learn more when you loose than when you win. Maybe play one bot match and one player match? Maybe try splitting into two smaller groups? I dunno, but playing with bots isn't really the same game.

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Oh I totally agree with that. We learned a lot from watching what kind of strategies they used to defeat us. Then again, we didn't learn anything once they just started spawn camping us instead of attacking the ancient. I'd like to avoid that kind of gameplay entirely if possible.

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Yeah, I get annoyed when players dive fountains to attack you. They already won the game, they're just rubbing it in at that point and prolonging it (which is why I sometimes alt-tab out and do something else at that point).

 

Bot matches aren't the same, but they're still good for learning basics and getting familiar with heros. I'd suggest upping the difficulty, though. Easy won't help and even on Medium they won't harass you last hitting in lane. Push it up to Hard to get a closer to real world experience cause then they'll be more active harassing/denying/etc.

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Oh I totally agree with that. We learned a lot from watching what kind of strategies they used to defeat us. Then again, we didn't learn anything once they just started spawn camping us instead of attacking the ancient. I'd like to avoid that kind of gameplay entirely if possible.

Yeah it's awful. One little trick you can use, since you were doing a five-man, is if they start spawn-camping? Just leave the game. If all five of you leave at once, the game automatically ends after thirty seconds. Leaving the game consists of: 1) Going back to the main menu. 2) Exiting the game. 3) Upon reopening the game DO NOT click Leave Game. You have to wait for the game to automatically end, or you'll get the abandon.

 

It's an extreme measure, but it's one that I've found has drastically increased my willingness to play after getting stomped like that.

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Yeah! Although I'm always worried that Valve will eventually prevent people from being able to do that, since they don't want to officially support a surrender option. I'd make sure that the Reconnect option is actually gone after about three minutes. If it isn't, reconnect. You have to be gone for five minutes before it's an abandon, so as long as you reconnect before that and go get some XP or whatever, you'll be able to avoid an abandon.

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Leaving games in progress, even blowouts, will eventually get you thrown into a low priority matchmaking queue. Not saying don't ever do it, but doing it too often will just get you stuck in the sewers playing against people that are even worse.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9585-EOSN-3800

 

Edit: I hadn't considered what happens if everyone quits before the 5 minutes is up. Not sure how that works.

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It works exactly how I said it works: no one gets an abandon. The game's auto-end mechanic prevents enough time from passing for anyone to actually get an abandon.

 

Exceptions, I should point out, can occur if you've accidentally accrued over 4 minutes and 30 seconds of AFK/disconnected time throughout the game up to that point. It's a cumulative thing before the abandon occurs. Which isn't necessarily the fairest of things, but I guess it's better than having it reset every time, as that'd be really prone to abuse.

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So, wards. Last night I was playing with a friendly, yet intense gentleman from the Giant Bomb group who was clearly much more experienced in the game than a "low level matchmaking" group really should have been playing with. I was playing support lich, and was getting my first reak experience in warding. The problem is, that I was running around warding so much (and dying once or twice when ambushed in the river) that I ended up being level 4 when everyone else on my team was 8+. So, how should I manage the warding process and still being able to farm enough to be useful in the mid-game? Is there something obvious I'm missing here? Or as the weakest support am I pretty much doomed to be handicapped in levels?

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It's not uncommon for some supports to be really low level and have very few items compared to the rest of their team. That said, it's also not that common in low-level matchmaking, just because you typically don't need to roam around as much, since the other team wouldn't be doing it, either. Depending on the lane you were in, you shouldn't really be warding all over the map, unless you're playing a roaming support (i.e., going for lots of ganks). If you're in safe lane, get your farm/XP from stacking/pulling the jungle camp while your carry gets farm in the lane. Otherwise, just make sure the carry doesn't die (by putting up wards and babysitting!). If you're in offlane, you ward to stop the ENEMY from stacking/pulling and you basically just babysit. Trilanes are a whole other thing.

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They had me warding both ends of the river, and complaining that we still didn't have enough vision. I'm not really all that experienced with pulling camps yet, only 25 games in or so, but I'll work on that.

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Well, you shouldn't be the only one buying wards. That's silly. Those guys are dumb and selfish.

 

Basically, if you're being forced to run all the way across the map to ward standard spots, then you're seriously crippling yourself. On the other hand, if you wanted to ward their jungle very aggressively, that's not a bad thing to "waste" time doing. Really, you only need one rune spot warded. I mean, yes, it's good to have up at least two wards at all times, but during early game, it's not as critical, until you get into really high-level play.

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